Interac serves as the Canadian debit card system and the predominant funds transfer network via its e-Transfer service.

[citation needed] The network was launched in 1984 through the nonprofit Interac Association, a cooperative venture between five financial institutions: RBC, CIBC, Scotiabank, TD, and Desjardins; by 2010, there were over 80 member organizations.

The group founded a for-profit counterpart organization, Acxsys, in 1996, which launched additional Interac-branded services including e-transfers.

[3][4] In 2021, Interac Corporation acquired the exclusive rights to the digital ID services for Canada from the digital ID and authentication provider SecureKey Technologies Inc.[5][6] On July 8, 2022, all Interac services were disrupted in Canada due to a nationwide Rogers Communications network outage resulting in millions of dollars in lost transactions for businesses.

Customers enter their personal identification number (PIN) and the amount paid is deducted from either their chequing or savings accounts.

Interac Direct Payment is a PIN-based system where the information entered on the PIN pad is encrypted and verified at a central server, rather than being stored on the card itself[citation needed].

[11][12] The main benefit to this technology over the existing magnetic stripes is that the chips are almost impossible to copy due to high levels of encryption.

By February 2009, Interac Online was supported by roughly 300 merchants including two large universities (for tuition payments), two major wireless carriers, provincial lottery corporations, and a wide variety of retailers.